Talk to Me (The Winner, Part II)

For myself, it'd only been a few months since I'd gone to the laser place and I was still getting used to how I looked now. Sometimes catching sight of my bare crotch in the bathroom mirror was startling. Occasionally my clothes felt weird too. Cold mornings were also cold, putting cold underwear against warm bare skin didn't help with that at all.

"I still think I should get done like you." Sin brought up the subject again. "At least they won't have to shave you at the hospital."

"Don't you dare." I used a finger on her chin to hold her still while I looked into her eyes. "I'd miss your hair. Anyone who saw you now would too if you got the rest lasered off."

"You think so?"

I nodded. "I know so. You're absolutely beautiful just the way you are."

She sighed lightly. "After watching how easy it is for you, the trimming I still have to do is a pain."

I snorted. Sin did a push-up to look down at me, indignation clear on her face.

"It is!"

"No it isn't. Ten seconds with a trimmer every two weeks is nothing."

"What would you know about it? You went straight from being The Adorable Snowmom to The Silver Smurfer." She flopped back down and ran her palm around my stomach, changing the subject as she did. "Not even a baby bump yet."

"I still have a couple of months to go before that happens. Then I'll get huge." And, now we were back to the pregnancy issue that started all of this.

She nodded. "No more bikinis for awhile."

"No more ever. I'm going to get fat and I'll probably stay that way."

"We'll see." Sin pinched the skin over my stomach. "A healthy diet and exercise are good for you and will help take off your extra weight."

I poked her with my finger for the second time. "Stop that, I'm not fat yet."

She pinched me again anyway. "I bet you'll still look good in a bikini too, like the black one you bought me. I get horny if I just think about you wearing it. Really horny."

I threw up my hands in exasperation. "No more bikinis."

"We'll see." Sin repeated herself and went back to slowly rubbing me. "Probably not for next summer, but maybe summer after next."

"No more sex either." I tried to put it as gently as I could.

They both stiffened, Sin's fingers going rigid and stopping their renewed motion.

"There's going to be a baby in the house. I won't have the time or the energy for just us. It's not that I won't still love you, I'm just going to be too exhausted at first. Then, when the baby gets older, we won't have the privacy. I'm not going to have sex where the baby could see or hear us. By the time we'd have enough privacy again, it'll be years from now." I explained my reasoning.

Sin shook her head in rejection of the whole idea.

"Yes. Unfortunately, it's time we all grew up."

Sin dropped her head onto my shoulder and squeezed me. "We love you mom. I always will. I'm never going to give you up."

"Don't make promises you won't keep." I felt wonderful over her declaration that she loved me but at the same time she needed to be told the truth.

"To quote the best mom in the world; we will find a way." Nicky shifted and put his head on my other shoulder. "We need you to talk to me."

A sound made me look at the doorway. Tom stood there. Here I was, naked in bed with his children, my legs spread while Sin ran her fingers around my private parts, and he said nothing. It was enough to bring a girl to tears.

I slipped away from them around midnight. They immediately spooned together, cuddling for warmth in the suddenly empty center of the bed as soon as I left. Tom lifted his arm without speaking when I crawled under the covers in our bedroom. I just moved close, putting my head on his chest while he wrapped me in warmth and comfort. He didn't ask me a single question, instead he just held me so I knew I was safe and that he still loved me no matter what.

In the morning it was the smell of something in the oven which woke me. Someone was baking even though it was barely dawn. Tom's side of the bed was still warm, so he hadn't been gone long. Listening, I heard the shower knob squeak as he turned the tap. So, if it wasn't Tom who was baking, it had to be the twins. Throwing on my robe I headed for the kitchen, stopping short as soon as I came around the corner from the dining room.

It was an utter nightmare. Clouds of flour drifted to coat everything in white dust. Lakes and rivers of what looked like cake batter flowed across the counter tops to drip down the fronts of the cabinetry; a broken egg lay on the tiles in front of the fridge; the banana slices from yesterday, joined by what appeared to be half a bag of frozen blueberries, were strewn everywhere else. My kitchen was a war zone, Sin and Nicky were frantically mixing batter and pouring it into muffin pans then stacking the filled trays haphazardly on every flat surface they could find.

Sin bent and looked through the glass in the oven door for a moment before donning an oven mitt and grabbing one pan from the interior and shoving another inside.

"Twelve," she said as she put the hot pan on the top of the stove to cool and went back to filling muffin cups with batter.

Nicky glanced at the digital clock on the wall. "Thirty three minutes."

"What are you doing?"

They ignored me as if they didn't hear me and kept on mixing, pouring and stacking muffin trays. Tom appeared in the corner of my vision and made a gesture towards the living room. Quickly I followed him as drops of batter flew past me to land on the dining room floor with a splat. I needed to get out of the kitchen before I wound up covered in batter too. More flying droplets hastened my already quick disappearance. Tom snitched a couple of the muffins and followed me out.

"You know they won't clean up that mess." I sat next to Tom as he deposited the two muffins, one obviously blueberry and another which looked like banana-nut, onto the coffee table. "They never do."

"They might. Sometimes they remember to put things away after they're done." Tom calmly peeled the paper pan-liner from the blueberry muffin. He wasn't concerned at what the twins were doing. After more than twenty years of watching them compete against each other, today was nothing new. He offered half of the muffin to me but I shook my head, my stomach was still upset at the mess the twins were making in my clean kitchen.

Even the thought of what they were doing was making it worse. I burped as nausea churned my stomach, bile rising into my throat. Tom looked at me for a moment before dropping the muffin halves and hauling me to my feet, dragging me down the hall to the bathroom. Just in time I leaned over the sink and threw up, Tom holding my hair so it didn't get splattered while I gagged and heaved.

"I'd say this pretty much proves you're pregnant." Tom handed me a washcloth when I was finally done, filling the glass that was kept by the sink and offering the water to me so I could rinse my mouth when I finished wiping my face. I sloshed some mouthwash around my teeth too. Yuck!

The twins didn't clean up anything. By the time I was done getting showered and dressed after tossing my cookies, I had two small mountains of baked muffins piled on the dining room table making greasy spots on the tablecloth, a filthy kitchen, and no twins. They even left the oven on, including the light inside. It was a miracle that one of them had closed the oven door before they vanished.

I checked their bedrooms, nope, they were still missing. I did clean up the broken egg on the floor and turn off the oven, but everything else I left the way it was. Nicky and Sin could do the dishes and take care of their mess when they returned, I wasn't their maid and they knew it. Or they would by the time they finished making my kitchen spotless again.

The two of them were holding hands when they came through the front door and saw me standing there with my arms crossed. They stopped instantly and looked at each other, faces going blank as they did their twin-bond thing.

"What?" Sin asked cautiously a few seconds later. "I called the auto club and they fixed your tire. They aired it up again after I told them what happened. They just left."

I waited. Sin looked at Nicky again.

"What?" Nicky this time.

"Muffins." I nodded toward the twin peaks easily visible on the table.

"Muffins!" Sin grabbed one and chomped into it while tossing a second to Nicky.

"And a mess."

They both froze and looked at me, Sin's chipmunk cheeks flexing as she tried to swallow her mouthful of muffin without choking on it. Crooking my finger I led them into the kitchen. They stopped short as soon as the kitchen came into view, looking first at each other then to me with identical quizzical expressions.

I crossed my arms again and waited once more. Sin looked around and then glanced at Nicky who shrugged like he didn't know what I was talking about either.

"There are dirty dishes everywhere." I pointed. "The counters need scrubbed and the floor mopped. Everything else, including the walls, needs sponged off and wiped down."

They looked at each other again. I sighed. It was like some things just didn't exist for them if those things were in any way connected to the contests they had. Once the contest was over, it was over and they never brought it, or the aftermath, up again.

The things I knew about, like Sin's black eye; Nicky's lacerated leg; their broken mountain bikes after racing them downhill and crashing repeatedly, along with scaring me half to death when I learned about it; the three-inch diameter cluster of blowgun dart holes in the wall of the brand new garden shed!, were all on that list. My toxic waste dump of a kitchen was another of the invisible after effects the twins either wouldn't, or couldn't, see.

"What?" They both said it this time when I sighed once more.

It took them over an hour and their fingers were wrinkled prunes by the time they were done. Mine too, because this wasn't a punishment, but at least my kitchen was clean again. I did have to leave once to go do the vomit and gargle thing again, double yuck!, and when I got back I caught both of them starting to wander off while holding hands. I quickly checked to see if they were finished with everything. They hadn't, the dishes were only half washed and the mop was leaning against the island with a puddle of water forming at its base. I grabbed both of them before they got away and put them back to work.

"No more cooking or baking contests in my kitchen." I pointed my finger in warning once we were done. Nicky looked at Sin again. I sighed for the third time. "Never mind. Happy Leap Day."

Sin crowed, tossing her hands in the air and dancing a small circle. "Winner!"

Nicky watched her dance for a bit then chuckled like someone had said something silly. Sin stopped dancing immediately and tucked herself into Nicky's side, snickering and grinning a very toothy smile at him.

"Umm?" I wanted to know what had just happened.

"I made a joke. I thought it was funny too." Sin's voice and eyes went distant as she slid her arms around Nicky's neck and planted a deep kiss on his lips. "I love you Nicky."

Her eyes were locked on his as they rested their heads together. Moments later Nicky picked her up and headed for his bedroom, Sin wrapping her legs around his waist and hugging him tight as her eyes went completely blank. After waiting fifteen minutes I peeked around the bedroom door just to check on them. Sin was only half undressed and semi-spooned in behind Nicky. One sock was still on her foot and her bra was only unhooked instead of hanging on the dresser knob or on the floor. She still had her underwear on too, which was a remarkable thing in itself.

Raven hair billowing like a dark cloud behind her, she had her eyes closed and her nose tucked into the back of his neck. I could see the small movements of her throat and lips as she silently talked to her twin-self in a way only they could. It was a sign of their closeness and the rest of the world wasn't invited into their private world or conversation. Neither of them noticed as I carefully draped the sheet over them both.

Part II

"What is this?"

I held out the book I'd found stuffed underneath Sin's mattress when I changed the bed linens that morning while they did their own housework chores. Finally the weeks of any-time-of-the-day-or-night-instead-of-only-in-the-morning sickness had ended and the twins didn't have to do everything themselves anymore. Not that they'd said anything about it, it just wasn't fair to ask them do it all. They weren't servants to pick up after me and their father. On the other hand, some of the meals they'd cooked were deliciously different and I was able to keep food down most of the time when they did.

I'd made sure I complimented Sin at the time for the new recipes she'd used. She'd smiled secretively at me and hadn't said anything else about them. Now I knew where they'd probably come from. They'd gotten sneakier about it, but they were still forcing me to do what they wanted rather than letting me make my own choices.

At the sight of the book Sin squirmed like I'd raided her and Nicky's porn collection, opening her mouth like she was going to say something but closing it again without speaking. Nicky's face went blank and I knew I wouldn't get any answers out of him, he was hiding behind Sin's emotional shield and letting her do the heavy lifting.

"Well?" I held out the book again; Health and Nutrition During Pregnancy.

"It's a book." She barely answered my question, her voice low and sullen.

"And?"

"I got it from the library." More evasion.

"And?" I lifted an eyebrow.

"We have to return it soon."

"Aaand . . ." I stretched it out trying to get some kind of answer about why she had the book in the first place.

Sin looked at the floor and shook her head.

"Sin!" I gestured with the book again.

She looked up at me, drew a deep breath, and began to unpack.

"It's a book we got so I could help you while you're pregnant so the baby would be ok and there wouldn't be any risk to you like diabetes or miscarriage or anything and that way you could recover faster after giving birth and I had to hide it because I didn't want you to get mad at me for just wanting to love you and take care of you and be with you." The words came out in a rush, tumbling over themselves without pausing while her voice started rising with tension at the end. "I got it because I don't want to lose you again!"

I didn't know what to say. I knew how much she'd missed her birth mother. What I hadn't known was why Sin needed me to be her mom as much as she did. I don't know if Tom was aware of it, but now I knew why. She'd been given a second chance at having a mother and she wasn't going to let go of me no matter what anyone else said, did, or wanted. I was their mom. Period, end of discussion, go jump in a lake if you don't like it.

Sin turned to her closet, opening the door and taking down a canvas gym bag from the shelf. Inside were more books.

"I have these too." She upended the satchel and dumped the books on her bed, giving me a dejected look followed by a huge sniff once she did.

Wellness for Women. Nutritional Guidelines for Adults. Recipes For Living Lean and Healthy. The New Mom Handbook. I scanned the titles I could see, they were all about health, nutrition, and coping with pregnancy and newborns.

"I have some others." Sin confessed for Nicky, speaking for him the way they sometimes did for each other. I was starting to discern the difference because her voice changed ever so slightly when she was speaking for Nicky instead of herself. It didn't sound like Nicky but it also didn't sound like her. Not exactly. The difference was so slight and subtle that it'd taken me a very long time just to begin to hear it. I still missed it more often than I caught it.

About what?" I looked at Nicky instead of Sin. "Nicky? What are the other books about?"

"Sports and . . ." Sin stopped when I waggled a finger at her. She knew that I preferred Nicky to talk to me instead of her speaking for him.

"Nicky?" I prompted him again. "Talk to me."

"Fitness." Nicky eventually spoke the single word. He was still hiding behind Sin emotionally.

"What kind of fitness? Physical fitness?"

Sin nodded for him. "For after so you can get back into shape. That way you'll go back to being just like you are and you'll love us again so we can be with you and you can do whatever you want. Like go to the beach with us and other places with Dad like you do now."

I sighed. She really wanted me to wear a bikini again.

"What?" They looked at each other and then to me.

"Two words; stretch, marks." I held up a finger for each one as I said them.

They looked at each other again then the books on the bed. I think Nicky was the winner in the race to grab one, but if so it was a photo finish, Sin was that close behind him. Sitting down next to each other they ignored me to begin flipping pages while holding the book across their thighs. Finished with that one, they grabbed a second. And a third when the second book failed to produce what they were looking for. At the end of them flipping the pages in the third book they looked at each other then stood up.

"What?" Great, now I was saying it.

"Gotta go. Bye mom." They both kissed me, stuffed the books back into the gym bag, and started to leave.

"Wait! Where are you going?"

"The library." Nicky held up the gym bag.

"Oh. Ok, let me get my purse and I'll drive you." I had questions and they had the answers to them. Maybe. Knowing them that wasn't always a given.

The library was huge. I hadn't been there in years and they'd done a complete renovation and expansion in the intervening time. Now it echoed from the vaulted center chamber up to the stacks on the new second floor.

"This way." Nicky whispered to me and led off toward the stairs.

I looked up at the second floor as I followed him. Rather than take the stairs he walked past them to a little alcove tucked underneath them.

"They put the family planning books here, even though it's out of sequence, so pregnant moms don't have to climb the stairs." Sin ran her fingers along the books on the shelf. "We had to ask because we couldn't find them the first time."

"And the books Nicky brought home?"

Sin waved a free finger at the upstairs section and kept looking at book titles. I watched her as she moved along the stack, running her fingers along the spines as she looked at each one. Nicky started at the other end, working his way back toward his twin. He almost paused once but Sin shook her head no and he resumed his searching. Shortly afterward Sin pulled a book from the shelf and kept on reading more titles. Occasionally she'd nod and Nicky would pull a book out too.

There was a table nearby and I slid out a chair so I could sit while they searched for the books they wanted. A woman with long wavy red hair and a green sweater sat at the other end of the table, several books spread out in front of her as she took notes from them. She glanced up as I sat down. Older looking than the twins, but younger than I was, she had a generous sprinkling of freckles and eyes to match her sweater.

"Hi." I whispered to her, just being friendly.

She put her pencil down to look at me.

"Sorry." I tried to apologize for disturbing her.

"Are you trying to pick me up?" The stranger rested her chin in her palm and waited for my answer.

"Shhh!" The librarian shushed us from his position behind the check-out counter. The redhead pointedly ignored him, flipping her hair in dismissal.

"Boyfriend?" I nodded toward the librarian.